From what I have observed in both of my placements, my cooperating teachers tend to be in a rush at the end of class. Since both of these teacher assign a lot of hands on lab activities, they usually use the last two or three minutes to have the students clean up. This means that the students do not have a chance to review the concepts of the lab at the end of class. However, both teachers begin their classes with a review of the previous class activity.
In order to establish connections between lab activities and the science content, students need to review the main concepts of the activity while it is still fresh in their mind. When I begin teaching, I hope to organize my class each day in a manner in which we will have time to review what we just learned from our lab activity. This will ensure that my students leave the class understanding the key concepts of the lab activity. My cooperating teachers probably understand the need for the end of class review, but just run out of time. By reviewing the key concepts at the start of the next class meeting, I can see that the teachers do understand the need for helping the students develop connections with the material. Since they did not fit the review into the end of their previous class, they are doing the next best thing by reviewing as soon as they meet again. The down side to this is that the review takes additional time because the students must be reminded of what the activity was about and they tend to forget a lot of the key concepts (especially in the middle school where the students have class every other day).
In order to establish connections between lab activities and the science content, students need to review the main concepts of the activity while it is still fresh in their mind. When I begin teaching, I hope to organize my class each day in a manner in which we will have time to review what we just learned from our lab activity. This will ensure that my students leave the class understanding the key concepts of the lab activity. My cooperating teachers probably understand the need for the end of class review, but just run out of time. By reviewing the key concepts at the start of the next class meeting, I can see that the teachers do understand the need for helping the students develop connections with the material. Since they did not fit the review into the end of their previous class, they are doing the next best thing by reviewing as soon as they meet again. The down side to this is that the review takes additional time because the students must be reminded of what the activity was about and they tend to forget a lot of the key concepts (especially in the middle school where the students have class every other day).